MOSHER CHRISTMAS
I first met my wife Kathe in Winsen, Germany when I was invited by a Wooster College friend to visit her mother’s best friend who was Kathe’s mother. Her mother had married an American and lived in Chicago but they had maintained their friendship. That first German Christmas in Kathe’s home was magical. The tree was set up in the living room and decorated by Kathe’s mother. No one else was allowed in the room until Christmas Eve. Then the tree, festooned with red apples and glowing with the light of thirty burning candles, was revealed to us. Each person got one present, something practical like a book. We drank egg nog and ate Kuchen and had a marvelous evening. Every year since then up until today has been celebrated in the same magical delight except that lights replace burning candles, a greater hazard in the USA with our wooden houses than in Germany.
Again we have gone back to each person being designated to choose for one person a present which we opened slowly with great ceremony. Then my son Tom passed goofy presents which he had found in thrift stores. Caroline, the future doctor, was given a box of plastic body parts to be inserted in a kind of ghoulish game. I was given a white jacket of the Cali-Life Malibu Social Club.
Then long time friends the Hanlone arrived for dessert and we all made merry over the odd ball presents and shared memories of the children in both families growing up together on Melrose Avenue in Asheville.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 